Tuesday, September 26th

An Aspen man who said Jordan winery owed him $15,000 for damaging his home during the 2012 Food and Wine Festival must pay the business $1,519 for wrongfully withholding its security deposit, a judge ruled this week.

Raphaël Brisbois, the director of winemaking at Rack & Riddle Custom Wine Services, passed away from cancer on Aug. 22, 2013 at the age of 62. He is survived by his wife Sylvie; two sons Ludovic and Benoit and his two grandchildren.

Dick Vermeil, Super Bowl-winning coach and two-time NFL Coach-of-the-Year and winemaker Paul Smith will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new Napa tasting room on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 5:30 p.m.

In late August, agents of the Alaska Environmental Crimes Task Force descended on several mines around the town of Chicken, and may have been there to check section 404 violations of the Clean Water Act - discharges into rivers, lakes and oceans.

Equality, freedom, prosperity. This is every American's dream, the basic tenet of this country, the reason behind creating this beloved nation. But in this era in which we endlessly debate immigration from coffeeshops to Congress, many seem to have forgotten the immigrant's dream.

The words "courageous" and "wine journalist" aren't ones that routinely enter my brain within about 24 hours of each other, much less in the same sentence. In fact, wine journalists tend to be just the opposite given the fact that most decided early in their careers they wanted to be nowhere near trading floors, war zones, crime scenes, inner cities - or even vineyards and wineries for that matter.

With the quality of the 2013 Bordeaux vintage looking uncertain, coupled with the fact that most of the prices of the 2010, '11 and '12 haven't really risen, collectors and those who track the fine-wine market are beginning to look for alternative investment regions.

Output may climb 7.5 percent to 44.5 million hectoliters (1.17 billion gallons) from 41.4 million hectoliters in 2012, the Agriculture Ministry wrote in a report today. The forecast was cut by 1.3 million hectoliters from a month ago, equivalent to 174 million bottles.

The Chinese former NBA all-star has added a new, cheaper wine to Yao Family Wines, his two-year-old winery in the Napa Valley, to appeal to China's growing middle class. The wine launched this week in China and will be released in the U.S. in January.

New research from Wolf Blass and Trend Hunter suggests Canadians are becoming "everyday sommeliers" with the help of social media, smartphone apps, and unprecedented access to vintners. The report notes that there were more than 450 wine apps for the iPhone alone in 2011, and nearly two million wine-related blog posts as of 2009.

He's earned a more dubious distinction as possibly the first person to get busted while applying for a federal distillery license. Under Virginia's Alcoholic Beverage Control regs, that could cost him his license to make wine at all.

August is a quiet month for the wine trade, so it's no surprise that trading on the fine-wine platform Liv-ex took a hit. However, Tuscany's finest wines bucked the trend, witnessing "a flurry of trading activity."

The eight new MWs - two of whom work in the US, and six in the UK - include the first ever Turkish Master of Wine. Each of them has successfully passed all three parts of the Master of Wine examination, which consists of Theory and Practical papers and a Dissertation

The eight new MWs - two of whom work in the US, and six in the UK - include the first ever Turkish Master of Wine. Each of them has successfully passed all three parts of the Master of Wine examination, which consists of Theory and Practical papers and a Dissertation